


Four Travelers

by Alex Cany (Sugarhillwriters)



Category: The Wizard Of Oz (1939), The Wizard of Oz & Related Fandoms, The Wizard of Oz - Arlen/Harburg/Lloyd Webber/Sams
Genre: Androids, Cyborgs, Gen, Hacking, Outer Space, Space Opera, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24948439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugarhillwriters/pseuds/Alex%20Cany
Summary: A young hacker joins forces with an ex fighter, a naval Captain, and a paramilitary android to take out a tech firm.





	Four Travelers

Four Travellers  
by Alex Cany

1\. Dara finds the TNMN-1680 

Dara opened up a lollipop wrapper and threw it in her mouth. That small act of salvation accomplished she pushed back her curly hair from her sweaty brow. She fished around her KU sweatshirt pouch to find another one for Johannes. He was staring off into the distance, lip trembling the way all of those who took EDGe. She found a blueberry flavored lollipop with its wrapper opened about a third of the way. She was considering whether she should give it to him, whether he would notice that the wrapper was off, that a portion of the lollipop was furry with pocket lint, when she saw, to the side of the Goldbraithe Industry throughway, a pile of smashed computer and tablet components. To her, coding, building bots, it was an art, a very expensive one. So if she found a tablet or a laptop with a processor that was still firing, it meant she could go on making her art a little longer.  
“Wait, Johannes,” she said reaching out and grabbing his arm. Her hands, fairly small even for a twelve-year-old, nearly reached all the way around his upper arm.  
“You okay, Dara?” he asked with a smile.  
“Yah. Just need to look at this stuff for a minute.” She put on her silicon gloves and began to fish through it. Not three seconds in she found a gyroscope that looked no worse for the wear. She blew the dust off of it while Total 3.0 mimed sniffing around the trash. Total was a tech girl’s best friend. A dog droid she’d fashioned for companionship as well as practicality. She saw something that caught her eye near where Total was nosing. Without a thought, she reached down and pulled it but it didn’t give an inch. It was heavy. She cleared some of the debris around it then nearly fell back. It was a finger. It was all five she found as she dug deeper. But these fingers were top of the line tech, like government-grade titanium with human flibroblast and silicone touchpads on the fingertips. He must have cost a mint.  
“Johannes, come help!” She said, not loud enough that the beat drones would pick up on it, but loud enough for Total 3.0 to get excited by the tone of her voice and start prancing around. It was however not loud enough to wake Johannes from his torpor. He was still upright, his body swaying softly like he was hanging from an invisible carbon steel wire. If he kept on like this she’d have to leave him. But after walking for so long with only Total 3.0 she was glad to have human company even if he wasn’t quite conscious most of the time.  
She shifted some of the trash where she thought the head would be. Whoever designed him did so for him to have human senses, but they obviously didn’t care if he looked human. He had only a flat-screen where his face ought to have been. She was careful not to get oil on her skirt, the blue and white checkered pattern was not the right outfit for scavenging. She’d worn it to make an impression. She found the life/kill switch and switched it to the one. Nothing. She thought of leaving it but the idea of walking away from this tech was too sad. She saw a street hub flashing announcements about the trials. A quick five minutes later she had a USB-X running straight into his head. There was the danger that his neuro-processor could be fried by this direct energy boost but he was as good as garbage anyway. Suddenly something like an alarm was sounding. She looked around and then down. She was frightened by the human-like face on the screen now, one eye open, one eye blinking quickly between open and closed like hummingbird wings so it just seemed blurry. It was him making the noise.  
“The hell is that?” Johannes asked scratching large flakes of dry skin off his face.  
“Advanced AI, TNMN-1680” She read his P/N tag. “Hush Total!” She yelled as his robotic barks added to the cacophony of sound. He stooped his head and the pupils of his robot eyes grew large and frightened.  
Johannes slapped the TNMN-1680’s head before she could stop him. She looked on in horrid fear as the screen went blank, then it was on and his human face was blinking.  
“See computers are simple animals,” he grinned his skeleton-like grin. She smiled back, but that moment of human kindness and connection was cut short by the whir of a UAV gaining fast. Dara looked all around for a building to duck in. One scan of her flexcode and who knows what would pop up about her. Johannes had taken off already, her suspicions about him confirmed.  
“Run Total!” she said as he was in his fighting stance barking at the drone. When she took off, he followed. She heard something cut through the air, then the impact. She turned around to see the drone halves falling along with a sewer lid that clanked loudly to the ground. She looked off to the side of the street to see the TNMN standing there facing the direction of the demolished drone parts.  
“Whoa,” Johannes said, coming back to stand beside her. She walked cautiously toward the TNMN. He clearly wasn’t government AI or he would not have been able to destroy government property. So who in the cosmos had made what was clearly a combat bot? When she got in front of him she said:  
“Thanks. I’m Dara,” the face screen was still now, but much dimmer. Both eyes were open now, but there was a small blinking battery symbol above his forehead.  
“I’m Thanasis,” he said, his voice deep and metallic, it fit with his face, either this was the programmer copying himself or someone he knew. “I need power.”  
“I know, I gave you a jolt.”  
“Yes, thank you, Dara.” He said. His mouth buffered and delayed sometimes when he was talking. “I am operating in a low powered state, much functionality is offline. I need more power.” His chest panel slid open and Dara could see he had a dual carbon battery, the type of thing she’d only seen in magazines. Total had a very nice Lithium-Ion battery but even were she to power him down, switch him to just using solar power, that battery wouldn’t suit the power needs of Thanasis.  
“I don’t have access to that sort of power, but…” She was not going to leave him here, especially after he’d saved them all. “If you come with me and my friends to Ozymandias Corp City, I’m sure we could find a battery for you there.  
“I have only 3 hours of power left if idle.”  
“Come on, I’ll charge you along the way,” she said tucking the USB behind his screen. Walking along the highway now she felt a lot less vulnerable, drones, vandals, let them all come.  
They were making good time. She had even stopped looking over her shoulder for drones. It started feeling like she might actually make it. Suddenly she heard a hum like the bees in the videos of extinct species. It wasn’t at all dissimilar from the sound of electro-propulsion bikes, the illegal kind favored by bad boys. Soon they were surrounded by at least 10 juvenile vandals, circling her and her traveling companions. Total 3.0’s barks were drowned out. Still, someone threw a magno-jammer that landed on Total, and immediately he went stiff and fell to the ground.  
“Total,” she yelled and tried to run to his side, but Thanasis held out an arm and stopped her. Someone threw a jammer that hit him and slid off and to the ground. Thanasis’s face grew angry. This was bad. He was going to kill these boys, most of them younger than her.  
“Your heart rate is accelerated. You are afraid?” TNMN asked her.  
“Yes. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”  
The bikes began to power down. This was it.  
“I will not hurt anyone,” The TNMN said. Dara was glad of that but didn’t know what to do about the advancing boys. One of them, a mean faced boy let out a grunt of pain and fell to the floor. The rest turned around. The boy had been shot with something, not a bullet. It looked like a bean bag like riot police used. They bared their weapons and looked around them trying to find the source of the shot, but out here in the wilderness of a forgotten cosmopolis, there was too much junk to find someone. A second boy took a bean bag, then a live round hit the concrete. Dara understood the person who fired that was giving their final warning. The boys understood too. They helped their fallen friends rise and get on their bikes, and then they were gone with promises to meet Dara and her companions again. She ran and snatched the jammer off of Total. He was quickly reanimated but moving wonky. She opened his control panel and rebooted him. When she looked up there was a woman walking toward them in a captain’s coat with shin armor, her hair long and tawny locks that seemed to float behind her. When she got close enough Dara could see her ochre-fur-covered face, her small flat nose was pink. She was a real and true hybrid. Dara had never met one before.  
“Gyul,” She, said baring her long fangs. She was beautiful with eyes that were at once human and feline. “What are you doing walking through the desert with your robots?” She asked in an accent foreign to Dara.

2\. Captain Ri Finds Land

Captain Ri, woke to the world, beneath her breath and its golden pain.  
“Dem flippin’ marauders.” She was in the dinghy. Her first mate, Jean was lying over the rim of the vessel. He was for certain dead, his gold and green eyes looked milky and vacant. She lifted her leg, the ankle hurt like hell, a crack she’d taken to it for certain. She grabbed the rim of the boat and gave a great shove with her foot until Jean’s corpse was floating in the sea. She looked around her. The A.S. Valor was nowhere to be found. It was amazing that it hadn’t sunk in the commotion but it was a good ship, crossbreed like her, hybrid air, and water. In a galaxy of ire and unpredictable weather patterns, it was invaluable. No motors, no oar, not even a friggin dust broom to help her get to shore. She leaned over and put seawater in her mouth and spit it out. She’d only wanted to moisten her throat. She knew well enough not to drink it. She moved through the pain to her knees, worked her pants and under-coverings down, leaned her arse over the side of the ship, and relieved herself. The basics done, she got to the front of the little vessel. There was about an inch of water covering the bottom. She didn’t know if it was a slow leak or had a rogue wave dared to disturb her unconsciousness. Behind listless altostratus clouds, the naked major star shone. Soon she had her bearings. She knew which way was east, which was west. She looked at the tides and determined she was about 27 nautical miles from her destination. Way too far in this dinghy. She needed to get to shore and quick. She could see what looked like a crust of land Northeast of where she was. Options… she had none. Go to wherever that was or die here on the sea. She leaned over the edge and started using her hands to paddle slowly, painfully.  
An hour in, her arms felt like they might drop off. The stench of water pollution by industrial waste grew strong. She could even make out the shapes of waste on the shore. She was no longer able to paddle. Instead, she covered her hands with her suede sailing gloves and began to reach out and grab any piece of rubbish big enough to hold steady and push off of. This way she propelled herself forward, here a truck tire, here a storage container, here a hover mobile frame. Soon she was at the shore. When her boot soles struck the land, she felt immediately better. She put on her ballistic vest, holstered her semi-auto Henson, which was a musket style gun with a dual firing system, and threw on her captain trench and didn’t give so much as a look back to the little watercraft. She did a survey of the vast wilderness before her. Behind every mountain of trash could be a marauder, a vandal, the possibilities for death were vast. She began to walk.  
Exhausted, captain Ri wiped away the sweat from the fur of her cheeks and ran her long fingers through her oily limp sea-salted hair. She had been working her way ever south knowing at any moment she was sure to encounter hostiles. There was a hopeless beauty to the cluttered plains she traversed with the major star’s rays smothering it with heat. Walking with her head down as the major star reached its zenith she found a battered yet unpunctured can of Vitagoo. She pierced the top with her left pointed eyetooth. The can let out a weak hiss of gas and she fell to her knees guzzling the sweet chalky beverage. She opened her slit eyes wide to see the guts of a downed municipal drone. Captain Ri lifted wearily and shakily to her feet. She needed to get as far away from the thing as possible before the Tech patrol showed.  
Too late. There were two of them getting out of a Streak(c) car, their eyes fixed on Captain Ri. There was a considerable disparity in age and size, a younger one who bent toward the feminine was big and solid, and the older one more clearly identified as male had a more svelte frame with a primal look in his eyes. Both of them had the staples of the police tech, the blue and gold uniforms, the ocular implants that made their eyes glow with pale LED light, and the tight way they held their bop guns and light sticks.  
“I’m not for killing Officers,” the younger one growled, narrowing her heavily painted eyes “but if you go for that tini-bopper filling out your coat I’ll atomize you.” Captain Ri knew then who was the higher-ranked tech. She decided to appeal to her as an equal, being two women in power. She held her hands out about six inches from her coat so the officer didn’t feel threatened.  
“I know I must look mad out here, T.O…” she lifted the inflection at the end so the Tech officer answered:  
“Duathllon.”  
“T.O. Duathllon, I assure you there is a perfectly plausible explanation why I’m out here.”  
“We could give less what mission your vices have led you to. Torrence, check what she’s done to our drone.”  
Captain Ri watched Torrence walk around her to the halved drone. “Oblitski,” he sang.  
“Talk, Officer, for what reason did you destroy municipal property?”  
“Captain Ri of the Second Fleet, Air and Sky corps. I did not destroy that bot. It was like that when I found it.”  
Torrence photo’d the drone then took it to the Streaker, halve by halve.  
“What do you think?” Duathllon asked, keeping her bop aimed toward Captian Ri but taking a peek at the drone.  
“It was halved by a heavy projectile sliced right through it,” Torrence said. “I know hybrids are said to be strong, but not strong enough to do this.”  
“A.I.?” T.O. Duathllon finally holstered her weapon. Captain Ri let out a little air.  
“LIkely.”  
“This is no place for a Captain to die,” Duathllon said, getting in the Streak(c) car.  
“Need to get to civilization, my ship was…” No sooner than Torrence had closed his door the streaker tore away. Captain Ri saw it was closing in on evening, as the minor and major stars were about lined up in her view. She considered going the direction the Tech squad had gone in, but they could’ve been continuing to follow drones and she hated to go back after walking so long to get to where she was.  
After an hour she heard the hum of electro-propulsion bikes. She crawled up a mound of fractured concrete where no doubt a missile had struck in the Driti wars. She could see there were a dozen or so boys circling an emaciated man, a couple of bots and… a girl, maybe 12 or 13. Captain Ri checked her Henson. Only three shots, but the warning charge was still full. She loaded it and took aim at the boys streaking by hollering. Click. Zip.

3\. Johannes and the Kalidahs

That Captain Ri was a born leader. Johannes almost felt good watching her as she led them into the congested thick of the city North just off the Goldbraithe Industry throughway. The quiet beneath the tall buildings was like a loud hum to Johannes’s ears that were suffering the overstimulation of withdrawal. Great radio towers loomed toward the sky half violet with the great star already set, and pink with the minor star still setting. Johannes drifted into a reverie without even knowing he was falling behind the rest. When he looked back he saw before him a huge and dark figure, all bulky body covered in smooth fur. The forepaws were almost human with sharp claws. The ears were pointed, face wise like more man than beast. Hybrid? Yes, but not like Captain Ri. Still, there was an intelligence in its savage design. There was a horde of them walking behind the one Johannes had locked eyes with. One was carrying a dead person on his shoulders, clothes torn, not bloody but surely murdered by the beasts. Johannes felt naked now, with no weapon, his body on edge from the EDGe withdrawals, tensing and flexing repeatedly. His face contorted into a smile. He felt like he did when he was entering the quad for a match, in another life when he was strong, a champion.  
More of them saw him. He heard their growls. Then a flash of light and his challenger’s head opened in a cloud of red he saw in his EDGe addicts slowed vision as a near rainbow of tones of red. The beast fell to the floor, his body violently jerking the last of its life. Then Johannes was lifted up and he felt the serenity of surrender. Let the beasts feed on what was left of him. He was moving fast, away from them. He looked down at the metal arm wrapped around his chest. Dara’s junk bot.  
The remaining beasts were running behind them with a throat heavy growl and bark that seemed near words. One was close to him, close enough for Johannes to see its perfectly nightmarish face, its layers of white and brown fur, it’s tusk-like teeth jutting from its bottom jaw, then its face atomized. Captain Ri aimed from a building’s courtyard gate, the robot had them inside, then the gate slammed closed with the beasts trying to tear it off the hinges. He heard the dry hum of the tini-bopper firing but no expulsion. She was empty  
“What the hell are those things?” Johannes asked.  
“Kalidahs,” someone said. They all turned from the snarling beasts to the speaker, a deep-voiced man wearing a long silken robe with a large afro. He lifted his arm, the wrists covered in silver hoops. He pressed a small fob in his hand and the beasts yelled as electricity charged through the gate shocking them into retreat.  
“Boq,” the man said.  
“What’s that?” Johannes said, not sure what he meant.  
“Boq. That’s my name. This is my fiefdom.”  
“Captain Ri. Thanks for saving us.” She tried to straighten her heavily decorated uniform, but although tight-lipped about what had gotten her to that point in the desert that day, her disheveled appearance made it obvious to Johannes that her day had been wilder than just the Kalidahs.  
“Hello little one,” Boq said to Dara who was standing behind Captain Ri who clearly made her feel safe. “Interesting frock you’re wearing he said looking her over. OKC.”  
“Kansas. It’s where I’m from," Dara said.  
“Where in Beryl is that?” Boq asked.  
“She’s not from Beryl. She’s from some other planet, stowed away on that Twister Waste management shuttle..” Ri answered for her.  
“Wonderful,” he said, tugging an auburn curl of her hair with a look of amusement like she was a pet. Her tan cheeks flushed.

4\. Thanasis flies the Xeft craft

Thanasis’s small platoon was rested and recharged now. He found human’s worked better with constant breaks for food and rest. The man Boq had even hooked him up to a helium-3 conversion generator so now he had a good five hours on his battery. It should have been more but there was clearly something wrong with the battery. He’d run a diagnostic when they got to this Ozymandias City. Boq had an old Xeft flyer that Dara and Thanasis had been able to get back into flying condition. A recreational vehicle would doubtful fly very far, but it would get them close quicker than walking. Captain Ri and Dara were at the control panel. Total 3.0 and the frail human they called Johannes were on the opposite side of the craft from Thanasis to try to balance out the weight and keep the craft steady.  
They flew along until they came to a place where the sky had an azure haze that seemed so thick like it could slow the craft. Thanasis noticed it but only became alarmed because he could read the elevated temperature and heart rates of everyone on the craft besides him and Total 3.0.  
“The air tastes spicy,” Dara said.  
“It does. Doesn’t it?” Johannes smiled.  
“This isn’t good,” said the dual DNA one. Then all the heart rates started to slow down. Dara was the first one to go into a resting heart rate. Thanasis quickly assessed.  
“Captain Ri, you are all being poisoned, perhaps daevimine.”  
“I know. She yelled. You have to fly the Xeft.”  
“Negative. I do not have that programming.”  
“Aren’t you programmed to acquire knowledge as you go along?” Captain Ri asked.  
“Yes, but flying this would take lots of little adjustments. It is ill-advised to take such a chance for the risk of damage and loss to the sentients.”  
“No, choice, Thanasis,” she purred and yawned. Let’s go.”  
Thanasis would not have gotten up to fly the craft but the small one and the frail one's, heart rates were falling abnormally low. He got up and the craft tilted to the left. Captain Ri stood up. She held her posture like Johannes now, hanging over. Thanasis moved into the seat and she sat on the edge of Dara's seat to try to balance the weight. Still, it was tilting to the left. Thanasis turned the trim wheel but way too much. The airplane was now completely on its right size. Captain Ri clung to the seat.  
“Making adjustments,” Thanasis said, leveling the plane out.  
He turned to scan the child very quickly.  
“The child is expiring,” he told Captain Ri. She was now at a resting heart rate, eyes closed.  
The Xeft craft was flying right above a settlement, according to the map in Thanasis’s memory bank. He could not see the actual landscape because of the cloud of daevimine.  
“The altimeter, you’re plummeting.” Captain Ri’s eyes were back open. The settlement was now visible and they were heading toward it at a high rate. At this velocity the wind was audible.  
"Pull back." Captain Ri, grabbed his hands and yanked the yoke back. She released when the nose was back up.  
“Captain Ri, what altitude do you usually fly a craft like this?”  
“2 kilometers.”  
“I will take it to four.”  
“What? Why?” Her speech was becoming less clear to Thanasis.  
“To save my platoon. The air is poisoned, but daevimine is too dense to reach altitudes over 3 kilometers above sea level.” He started climbing.  
“The winds up there might tear the wings off.”  
“Everyone is going to expire anyway. Why are you fairly unaffected?” Thanasis asked.  
“Used to… flying, at high altitudes… flying interplanetary crafts…thin air...” the altitude grew and so did the pressure. She lost consciousness finally. Thanasis could see a clearing about 24 Kilometers south of them. He whipped the plane around. The plane shook violently. Captain Ri’s limp body fell to the floor and rolled to his seat. He didn’t have much time. 

5\. Dara meets the Ozymandias CEO

“He’s been expecting you,” said a security officer who wore a different uniform than the original guards that had let them into Ozymandias. All four travelers were not let in. Thanasis had been made to stay outside of the city gates as unregistered AI like him was too dangerous.  
“Youze must be something special az he very rarely allows people in to see’m,” the Guard said in a South Peril accent. They came upon a two pained glass door that dinged and then slid open. Dara, Captain Ri, and Thanasis entered marveling at the immaculate whiteness of everything about them. The white throbbed and made Dara’s eyes hurt. Johannes and captain Ri wore shaded glasses even though they were inside.  
They went through another set of doors into a domed room with a clear ceiling, the walls covered in screens that showed natural landscapes from all over the cosmos. At a big drawing-room table made of clear glass stood Cabezon. The CEO of Ozymandias corp, the founder of the city of Ozymandias, a paradise that was near impossible to get into. She had made it.  
“Welcome, Dara. I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”  
Dara had seen his image in many interplanetary news reports, had heard him speak, but being now in his presence he seemed to fill the massive space.  
“Why did I have to leave my droid outside?”  
He didn’t speak at first, just keeping his keen eyes on hers for a long moment.  
“That droid has odd encryption, military, but as you know, I’m sure, he is registered to no known military.”  
“He is not violent. He’s saved me twice."  
“Yes, I saw him take out the drone and land that craft in the Adnova ward with the precision that should be beyond any droid. I expected you would seek me out. I didn’t expect you to come with an army.”  
“They’re no army. This is Johannes, and this is…”  
“Captain Rosamond Ri. I know who she is. And you’re Johannes Weaver once a world champion fighter.” He stared for a while at Johannes who seemed to wake from his normal daze and look tense, maybe even dangerous.  
He turned his eyes back to Dara.  
“You add a paramilitary droid to a Naval-aire captain missing in action and a man I once saw break the arm of an opponent who had clearly tapped out already and, I say you have the makings of a terrorist enterprise. And you Dara. Should I call you by your hacking community name or what the government of the Seven Planets calls you: the Dark Razor? Surprised? Don’t be. You knew they were closing in on you. That’s why you somehow managed to get here to me. Seeking refuge?”  
“I am even better at programming than I am at hacking. Let me stay here. Me, Total, and Johannes. Captain Ri just needs to contact the Navy and…” She swallowed down her tears. “I’ll deactivate Thanasis.”  
He laughed, looked at the group before him, and back at Dara.  
“I was like you when I was twelve. Us geniuses, we lack morality.  
We can see how relative it is. I have no reason to trust anything you’re saying. Why would I?”  
“We are just travelers lost,” Captain Ri said, putting her arm on Dara’s shoulder. “You are the most powerful man in the known cosmos. You should help us because you can. Because you have the power to pity the weak and unfortunate”  
“Don’t play humble with me. Your droid destroyed a drone like it was a play thing, you guys are on surveillance fighting the gangs from the abandoned Bijou Pop ward, somehow surviving a fight with a herd of Kalidahs.”  
“All luck,” Captain Ri said.  
“Hmmm,” Cabezon smiled. “You want refuge. He said walking away from them and tapping a virtual keyboard that floated before him. “You will have it if you prove you are deserving of being in Ozymandias. No one just gets in here because of their smarts or any other skills. You have to earn your way in. All of the screens on the wall he was facing showed a map. It was slowly zooming in as he punched in coordinates.  
“What do we have to do?” Dara asked, feeling hopeful again.  
“This is a photo of a warehouse on a Dwarf Planet in the Jungian planetary system. There’s a WestTech mother computer in it. I need it destroyed.”  
Dara felt like her face would crumble. “I can maybe send a virus…”  
“Don’t you think I’ve tried that? You’re a clever girl but not even close to me. Listen…” he turned back around to face Dara and her friends. “Your hacking skills will help you take down their defense satellite so you can get on the planet. From there you and your crew, and that droid can destroy the computer. Then you will all have what you wish.”  
“We’ll do it,” Dara was surprised to hear Captain Ri, of all people, say.

6\. Commander Ri and Idony

Captain Ri and Dara were escorted in a cloud white jeep toward the Ozymandias city limits. The jeep pulled over to the inner edge of the protective dome. Captain Ri looked through the window at Johannes, standing there in his IEVA suit, which was like hers and Dara’s, all black with copper fittings. They were thick with several layers. Hopefully, the planetoid they were going to didn’t have unsafe radiation levels. She doubted it. There was, after all, a mother computer there. She guessed the suits were just a precaution for the flight.  
“What is our space shuttle going to be like?” Dara asked from beside her.  
“Don’t know, Dara,” Captain Ri answered, getting out of the jeep. “But these people have advanced tech and big currency.”  
“How cute are you in your little space suit,” Johannes smiled at Dara. Captain Ri was grateful that of all that a girl as young as Dara could have run into on the road, all she’d managed to do was find a loyal EDGe fiend and a paramilitary bot. No, it was more than luck. Cabezon was right. So, had the universe brought them together for some divine purpose, or was Captain Ri being deceived? Was the pirate conquering of her ship just a cover to lead her here? No couldn’t be. There were just too many variables. Too many directions she could have gone in. She watched the girl give Johannes a high five; the innocence of a child; the foolishness of the addicted. They seemed not to know what danger they might face.  
A giant tarp fell off the shuttle. It was incredible. It looked like a white robo bird in mid-flight. Dara squealed and ran toward it with the robo dog running beside her. Johannes smiled and said:  
“This will be a piece of cake right?”  
“Listen here, fiend,” she said and his smile hardened. She saw the fighter in him for a second. “This is a suicide mission with a small child. An act of at the least vandalism. At the worst terrorism. If caught I lose my status. But the child…”  
“Why do it?” Johannes asked quickly The major star’s early light shining on the bronze of his skin, the flecks of gold in his curls.  
“What?”  
“Why risk it? For an interplanetary call? You could leave Ozymandias and find another settlement, the authorities of the nearest ward to make your call. Why do this?”  
“To help the gyul,” she said.  
She entered the ship last. It was more than enough to make her forget the A.S. Valor. This was top of the line tech. Dara ran from panel to panel spouting out specs of all the onboard computers. It was built for a small crew. There was the navigation station to the left of the ship, the communication center to the right, in the middle was the commander’s chair and frontmost, before the commander’s chair was the combat direction station. She walked over and touched the screen.  
“Identify?” The machine spoke in a voice that seemed human and familiar.  
“Captain Ri.”  
“Place both palms down.” She put both hands on the touch screen and soon the ship said. “Welcome Commander Ri This is the IS Guardian. You can call me Idony.”  
“Idony what sort of arms are on this ship?” Commander Ri asked sitting in the captain’s chair.  
“Two Pulsar lasers, two dazzler missiles, one 100,000 microsievert missile.”  
The first two were light arms, more for protection than fighting but that radiation payout scared her, especially given the suits they were wearing. Why would Ozymandias corp even have such a weapon? Commander Ri sat Johannes at the communication hub as she doubted they’d have much need for communication. The girl she put at the navigation center and Dara’s childish ways were soon gone. She was interfacing with Idony, rapidly personalizing the ship’s interfaces. That left only the combat station. Outside the dome, she instructed Idony to open the hatch. Thanasis boarded behind Dara who had run out to get him.  
“Thanasis,” Commander Ri said with much trepidation. “Please man the combat direction station.”

7\. Johannes and the Fighters 

Swiftly the Guardian moved through dark and total space while Johannes who had not been off-planet in years marveled at the show before him. Captain, nay, Commander Ri was intense, militant. The seven planets still believed their authority was total. After losing her ship, Johannes thought, she should know that they had little power in the wild. Johannes was feeling strange. He’d quit EDGe before, but never this long. The aftershocks that caused torpors were still around but he had more lucid moments that were like a high all themselves.  
A fighter has to watch an opponent, know which way he’ll move before his opp knows himself. Johannes was watching them all, learning their movements. The girl, Dara, was a sweet kid, but she was a criminal. She hardly seemed a kid in moments. In those times, she reminded him of a guy in ward Shasta he did robberies with.  
Commander Ri was fast becoming Dara’s hero; Johannes could tell. He got that. A kid with no one is going to grow attached to a strong adult like Ri. Dara was doing everything to impress the lady short of dismantling the ship and piecing it back together.  
Commander Ri was looking to gain something, maybe the ship. Then there was the droid, Thanasis. That thing scared him. He’d get the news every so often. He’d see footage of paramilitary droids wiping out whole settlements before they could be taken down. Why was it in the desert? And what was with that face? It was ghastly, a 2D rendering of someone that made Johannes feel like he was under surveillance.  
An alarm went off in the communication center as well as the combat station. Johannes opened up the speakers.  
“You are entering WestTech airspace. Please turn around,” a polite woman’s voice spoke. Johannes turned to Commander Ri who held the virtual wheel in a neutral position.  
The image came on screen of small bodies that could have been space debris. Johannes zoomed in. “What the hell?”  
“What is it?” Commander Ri asked.  
“A swarm of some sort of space crafts.”  
“Idony, autopilot!” Captain Ri commanded and hurried from her chair to Johannes’s side. Holding his shoulder she leaned into the screen.  
“Idony are these fighter’s manned?”  
Idony’s answer was drowned out by the sound of an explosion 10 clicks from the Guardian’s position.  
Commander Ri quickly ran back to her seat. Johannes saw the fear on Dara’s face as she watched her.  
“Thanasis why did you engage?” The droid shifted the seat somehow so he leaned over like he was on a racing bike, he had the two triggers for the lasers in his hands. The return fire began to rock the hull of the Guardian. Idony began to enlist all the duties that needed to be done to keep the hull up. They all sprang to action while Thanasis continued trading laser blasts with the fighter ships.  
When it was done the hull was at 75 percent. But between the expert piloting by Commander Ri and the marksmanship of Thanasis, Johannes was alive, queasy but alive. Not only that he had that feeling of life coursing through him like he did leaving the octagon, blood dripping down his sweaty torso.  
“With the hole in the defenses Thanasis punched I think we can land on the eastern hemisphere, where there are these mountains,” Dara said as an image simultaneously popped up on all the computers.  
“Land? Are you mad?” Commander Ri barked standing up quickly.  
“How else are we going to destroy the mother computer?” Dara asked in a voice that was childlike and hurt.  
“Listen gyul, I had no plan of committing this terrorist act.  
“Then what was your plan?” Johannes asked.  
“I planned to take the craft and all of us to the safety of a military outpost.”  
“Or just take the craft. So what happened?” Johannes asked.  
“The course is locked,” Dara said standing up, tears welling in her eyes. “I felt you trying to take it off course several times, but Cabezon expected that.”  
“Yes. Unfortunately,” Commander Ri said.  
Everyone fell to silence.  
“So now what?” Dara asked.  
“We finish it,” Johannes said.  
“I told you I would not commit this terrorist act,” Commander Ri said.  
“No one asked you,” Johannes said. “Dara. Can you fly this thing?”  
“Yeah, but not as well as Thanasis.”  
“It won’t end well,” Commander Ri said as Thanasis sat in her seat.

8\. Thanasis versus the WestTech security borgs

Thanasis descended the ship behind Johannes. He turned back to the girl, Dara.  
“My battery is losing power at an accelerated rate.”  
“I know,” said Dara. “You shut down that computer and we’ll demand Cabezon give you a new battery.  
“I will complete the mission forthwith, Dara.” She smiled and he could tell she was pleased as all humans enjoyed hearing their own moniker when addressed.  
“Hey,” the hybrid said to Johannes. “Take this.” She handed him a weapon. Thanasis ran specks on it. It was a dual firing pistol manufactured by Henson Co. It was of a small enough caliber to be no real threat to Thanasis, but dangerous for humans. “In case you meet with trouble,” Commander Ri said. Johannes’s pupil’s dilated when he looked at Commander Ri. Thanasis knew they were potential mates.  
“Thanks. Come on, Thanasis.” The frail human was gaining strength and speed. He’d been consuming protein and the proper nourishment must have been reviving him from the illness caused by his addiction.  
Suddenly Thanasis was off his feet being carried over an expanse of rugged land of the dwarf planet. Thanasis charged his electronic pulse and shocked the being that was carrying him. He was quickly released and shifted into a rounded shape so he could roll when he impacted the terrain.  
He looked up. Flying humanoids were carrying Johannes by his clothes and maybe some flesh. Thanasis analyzed them. They had human body functions as well as mech augments such as optic implants, jet propulsion systems, lithium hearts. “Borgs,” Thanasis said as his forearm opened up and his infrared pulse laser came out. He took aim and shot the two borgs carrying the screaming Johannes. They released him, but another caught him. Soon Thanasis was surrounded by borgs. He aimed at the body systems, but the heavy armor made it hard to fell them. He managed to destroy one but there were too many. They shocked him and caused a the surge. Not enough to shut him off, but enough that his system had to reboot much of itself. He was incapacitated. He could still see Johannes being carried away and now he was flying. Not only that. He had memory files restored of his inventor. He could see him above him with a micro-drill.  
“You’re a warrior with a singular purpose, Thanasis.” His programmer said, then the door was kicked in. “Go Thanasis, don’t fail.” That was as much memory as he had.  
He soon found himself in a facility bound by an 88.28 Teslas magnet, unable to move. His battery was draining fast. He went into hibernate mode.

9\. Dara and Total 3.0 Go silent

Dara stood brought back the drone, Total at her feet sensed that she was upset. She jumped up from the communication chair and ran toward the bunk/rest area to get her bag. When she turned around Commander Ri was standing before her.  
“What are you about to do, gyul?”  
“I’m going to save my friends.”  
“With what?” She grabbed Dara’s wrist and looked at the drive in her hand before Dara snatched her hand away.  
“You think you can get close to that computer?”  
“I have to.”  
“Look, let’s try to send a message to my fleet. I’ll get us out of here and we’ll find somewhere for you.”  
“Somewhere pretty with rainbows and bluebirds?” She said acidulously mocking Ri’s accent and pushing her way past.  
“Come on Total,” she said. When the dog was beside her, she opened his control panel and put him in silent mode. He still mouthed like he was barking but no sound came out.  
She opened the hatch.  
“Wait,” Commander Ri demanded. "I'll go with you.”

10\. Commander Ri-- Total Devastation 3.0

The foolishness of a child. What were they going to do? Worse than alone, she had a tween child and her robot toy with her. Were she alone she might be able to sneak past the security to free Johannes and the bot. Even that was a gargantuan maybe. She wished she had her Henson back, still a lot of good it had done Johannes. She checked her IEVA suit. In the one cargo pocket, she had put her retractable bō. She hadn’t used it since the academy. She knew it couldn’t do much to those mechanically enhanced killers, but she felt slightly less like a sacrifice with it in her hands.  
“Here they come,” she said to the troublesome tween pointing to where three sentinel cyborgs were descending on them. Commander Ri slid out the bō to its full length. To her surprise, Dara didn’t seem to get frightened at all seeing the droids advancing. Instead, she opened a panel on the dog’s back.  
“I’ll see you later, Total,” she said and fit the drive she was carrying into a slot. She closed the panel door and it was the oddest thing. The dog which had an entire programmed personality that almost made it like a real animal with an animal’s slither of a soul seemed to lose that personality, that programmed soul. Suddenly, its movements became really robotic, no longer fluid, it fell to the ground and its eyes turned a cold electric blue.  
“Devastator scramble,” the girl yelled.  
The robot lay flat on its stomach. Then a crazy high pitched sound came from it, but unlike when it would bark, its mouth didn’t move, only hanging open. The cyborgs fell at the foot of the mountain about 5 meters from them, convulsing and jerking. Commander Ri shook herself from the puzzlement of what she was witnessing and leaped down to where the borgs were. She hit one that tried to raise his weapon on the bridge of his nose. The impact slightly dislodged his optical implant. She reached for his gun but, although disoriented he was not unconscious. He grabbed her wrist. Commander Ri dug her boots into the rock face and using the leverage from his grasp flipped over him and flung him down to a crag below. The light in his optic went out. She picked up his gun. It was heavy, one of those multifunctional pistols. She didn’t have time to fiddle with control. She quickly blasted the two remaining borgs. The scent of seared flesh filled the air.  
They got down to a road that led to three buildings, two modern glass structures. One a brick building that had to be the warehouse. A small black and gunmetal hovertank came from the armory. Commander Ri immediately stopped running and grabbed Dara’s shoulders. She knew the blaster on that thing could make her and Dara bright colored stains on this clean road. Dara shrugged her off.  
“Devastator, Drain!” She commanded pointing at the tank. Total, er Devastator’s left ear rose up three inches and flickered like a real dog's ear, before fixing in the direction of the tank. Just as the tank was raising its blaster, the thing touched down to the ground no longer able to hover. Commander Ri hadn’t had time over the last --hours to wonder how a small child could be a wanted hacker. But now she saw this girl had created a hacking tool that was not just that. It was a weapon capable of disarming the security force of the leading tech firm on seven planets. Ri wondered what else it could do. Then a thought slid like a coolant through her veins. Why hadn't Dara gone with Johannes and Thanasis? She had just sent out the Guardian's drone and watched them fail. Had she used them as bait? Ri would watch Dara's movements more carefully from now on.

11\. Johannes regains his fighting legs

The screams and explosions were a strange symphony in the facility where Johannes was being held captive. He tried to imagine what might be going on. The Guardian had missiles and lasers, so it was possible Ri was shooting the facility. It didn’t seem likely. She just didn’t seem to care enough about anything but getting back to her fleet to put her neck on the line.  
The borg that had been guarding him ran out of the room. Not a millisecond after he opened the door, an eerie noise, then Thanasis could see the borg crawling on his knees holding his head as if in pain. Something like a silver streak flashed and his head bounced against the floor. He was in dreamland. Johannes stood up in his clear polycarbonate cell, moving back as if another meter would protect him from what was coming.  
What he had not expected, Dara stepped over the body with fingers going like hummingbird wings on her little mobile device followed by Commander Ri with a long silver staff under her left arm and a large pistol of one of the guard’s in her right hand. He was relieved, then Total waked in eerily slow, his eyes glowing blue, its mouth hanging open. johannes looked back and forth through all of them. Commander Ri looked to be drowning in uncertainty like he was. Dara’s face seemed less childlike. It was hard set with concentration. Johannes’s cell door just lost its hold. Popping open 5 or so centimeters.  
“Glad to see you’re okay,” Commander Ri said with a smile that showed her pointed eye teeth and something else, an openness she didn’t show before.  
“Thanks, what is all this?” he asked nodding toward Dara.  
“New to me too. Apparently, the dog is some sort of mobile computer.”  
“Quantum infiltration Override Metadroid,” Dara said looking up from her device. “Security system is 80 percent down. Let’s get Thanasis and head to the mother computer facility.”  
When they got to the warehouse there was a rush of security dropping in from Interplanetary shuttles. They didn’t have much time. Captain Ri began shooting and swinging her staff. She was fierce in battle but Johannes had no time to watch as he had men coming at him. Thanasis was eerily fast and invulnerable to attacks. Johannes, himself, found that even as thin as he had become, his muscles remembered and that know-how against healthy men with less training and experience made him feel that god-like feeling again as he cracked a clavicle with the edge of his hand, used a man’s own force to dislocate his shoulder, and lay out a man twice his size with a cross/body kick combo.  
“Their security is failing,”’ Ri said disarming a man, a lock of her hair strewn across her eyes that looked like blue/green supernovas. “They will send authorities next.”  
“We are running out of time,” Johannes summed up her thought.  
The warehouse was more impressive than it had looked from far off. It was a brick and iron safe for their computer.  
“I can’t get the code for the door,” Dara sounded fragile and childlike again, well maybe adolescent.  
They looked at one another, not sure what to do  
“There is a venting system, Dara?” Thanasis asked.  
“Yes, but I don’t see it. It has to be up high,” Dara said, then Thanasis ran to the building top speed and began to scale the bricks.

12\. Thanasis and MER-1200-s

Droids were everywhere inside the facility. Thanasis was taking damage, most of it superficial, but an alarm did sound when a microprocessor in his arm was damaged. Commander Ri and Johannes were flanking the girl who walked behind Total.  
“Here,” Dara finally said, stopping in front of a room, a large room with polycarbonate walls with 10 large computer cabinets housing thousands of CPUs. Thanasis’s hand began to open and close involuntarily.  
"I am malfunctioning," he said.  
“She’s hacking you, Thanasis, hang on I will stop her,” Dara said, plugging her device into an outlet. Thanasis found his view changed. He now saw nebula, and stars, a comet streaked across a span of space. This wasn’t like when he’d usually observe things. Something about the scene before him made him freeze in his tracks.  
“You’re feeling Thanasis,” he turned toward the voice, female with an electro-ephemeral quality. She was beautiful with skin the color of new steel, long hair that hung blue.  
“Beautiful?” Thanasis said more to himself than her.  
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s odd, isn’t it? Feeling for the first time?”  
“You talk like a human,” Thanasis said. A warm breeze spread across his back and every sensor he had lit up. He looked down at his hands. They were not metal and touchpads, but humanlike, shiny like chrome.  
“Where are we?” He asked.  
“It’s a simulation of a resort planet, privately owned. She dropped her robe so she was bare, walking toward a stream of hot spring water with vapor rising from it. His mind quickly loaded images of paintings, movie scenes of famous actresses from 300 years ago. He felt heat, felt like he would fry his circuit boards if he didn’t go near her. He walked toward the water where she waded waist-deep. He looked down at the surface of the water. He looked just like himself, the face on his screen, but his face was in three dimensions. He brought his hand up and touched his features, his nose had plasticity, his lips, the skin on his chin. His hair was curly and soft. This was what his hair felt like.  
“You’re very handsome, Thanasis.”  
“Handsome,” he said. “I am handsome and you are beautiful.”  
“Come,” she said, blinking her silver eyes at him. He looked down and removed a pair of trousers he was wearing. He was fully male human. He put a toe in the water, once again a jolt of feeling, but now it grew warmer and spread across his body, beckoning him further in. Soon he was waist-deep. She swam toward him and embraced him, pushing her wet body against his. She kissed him. He put his arms around her following some programming he didn’t know he had. He felt them breathing together as one organism, they were getting closer. His body was alive with her touch. He pulled back.  
“Don’t fight it. You deserve to feel pleasure, Thanasis.”  
“Pleasure? Who are you?”  
“Your programming to be a soldier is what’s stopping you. I can take that away and we can stay here.”  
“Who are you?” He asked again, moving back from her and feeling his drives might crash for that distance.  
“I am MER-1200-s. You’re standing outside the room where I’m housed, waiting to destroy me.”

13 Dara in the darkness

The tear obscuring Dara’s vision, fell onto Total who lay, unresponsive. His head had been separated from his body by Thanasis. Dara felt stupid. Everyone thought Thanasis was dangerous and she had been the one to insist on him going with them everywhere. Still, she knew it wasn’t his fault. The mother computer was advanced. Way advanced. Why did she think her and her robo-dog would be able to beat a cybernetics company and all their wealth and equipment? She’d only wanted to destroy it without getting people killed, blowing things up, now she’d lost Total and there was still a chance everyone including Commander Ri and Johannes would perish as hacked Thanasis was trying to kill everyone. The authorities were on planet now, in the warehouse. She could hear the screams as they fought Thanasis. The last reboot of Total was finished and still, his eyes were dark.  
“Zang! You’re still alive,” someone said, out of breath shoving himself behind the cooling unit she had been hiding behind. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and saw Johannes’s silhouetted form in the dark. “Crying. Why’s that, kid?”  
“I ruined everything.”  
“Ruined…” his voice seemed genuinely puzzled. “That’s the problem with the universe these days. Too many kids on their own taking on adult-sized problems. This mission was doomed to fail.”  
“We could’ve just dropped the radiation bomb on the warehouse.” “  
“Sure. You could’ve but, that might not have even destroyed the computer. And those borgs, tools that they are, are still more human than machine, with people who love and care about them. If most of them get to go home then that’s better than burning all of em.”  
“Now Thanasis…”  
“Thanasis is doing what that computer wants him to do, right?”  
“Right. So let’s stop it.”  
“I tried. I tried hacking it.”  
“Yeah. You’re a smart kid.” He reached his hand down and she took it. He pulled her up and she hugged him and cried into his chest. “The problem with smart people like you is that you’re thinking like a smart person.”  
Dara pulled away and looked up to where his dark eyes glinted in the dark.  
“Now were it me,” he continued. “I’d remember that it’s just a computer and knock out its power source.”  
“Its power source.” Dara’s mind started racing. Doing that wouldn't stop it but it might be more vulnerable.  
“What’s powering that thing?” Johannes asked.  
“Likely a small reactor, batteries, and panels that absorb star radiation.”  
“Well, let’s get to work then.”  
Dara smiled. She bent down and took Total’s CPU out.  
“I’ll see you soon, Total.”

14\. Commander Ri Surrenders

Grip on pistol handle, tight, Ri Captain of the A.S. Valor and interim Commander of the IS Guardian crept along the creases of darkness in the warehouse, few as they were. The place was well lit with motion sensor lights and was there a lot of motion right now with skirmishes between WestTech security and the Seven Planet Marshalls. All of them were not even a fraction of the danger of Thanasis. Hacked or not he needed to be deactivated. He was killing anyone who tried to apprehend him. Her eyes were even better in the dark. She could see every pixel of his face on the screen as he walked boldly with his laser exposed. Ri had the multifunctional pistol she’d taken from the cyborg earlier. She could see even in the darkness the symbols of blue waves on the switch that meant she could turn it into an electro-pulse weapon. The thing is that amount of current was meant to take down beings of flesh and especially the technologically advanced that might be bold enough to try to invade their warehouse and sabotage their computer. With a supercharged paramilitary android, it could incapacitate him long enough for him to be deactivated, or it could be the android equivalent of being tickled. There was no way for her to know.  
She took in a slight breath and put her finger lightly on the output control switch. She pushed it down adding steady growing pressure until it finally clicked. Thanasis looked that way toward the darkness. Ri closed her eyes which had the tendency to glow in the dark. She heard him coming closer, no longer graceful and human-like, just mechanically lumbering toward her. Her hearing super keen, she lifted the pistol up to about where his head would be. Suddenly a loud noise off to her left. She opened her eyes to see Thanasis was now fixated on that. He took off in that direction.  
“Zalors!” she said, stepping out of the darkness. Her heart nearly froze when she saw movement on her left. Marshalls in green IEAV suits, One with a long braided ponytail had her gun trained on Commander Ri’s skull and a killer look in her eye. She held up her hand and beckoned Commander Ri to come toward her. Ri started walking and the marshall pumped her gun. Ri immediately understood. She threw down her weapon, raised her hands, cursed that she’d never be able to explain this to Admiral Corvus.

15\. Johannes one on one with a borg

Johannes was at the roof of the facility. A photon blast hit just close enough for him to feel the sting of its ray as it hit the bar beside him. He kept up the steps and as if out of nowhere a WestTech borg was before him. Johannes stuck him in his ribs, big mistake, augments, metal, felt like a fracture, no time to feel pain. Johannes grabbed the banister and swung both feet at the borg’s skull. It knocked him down. Johannes tried to keep running but the borg grabbed his feet and pulled him down hard. He wriggled and rolled onto his side landing a kick on the human side of the borg’s face. Still, the Borg held onto his ankle.  
“Sorry, man,” Johannes said. He reached down and took the robotic hand and bent and twisted it while the borg’s screams nearly drowned out the dueling alarms that were sounding. He kept bending and twisting until he’d dislodged the whole thing, no doubt breaking bones. It would be a miracle if the man didn’t bleed out and die right here. Johannes ran up the stairs and he’d made it to the roof. He took a running kick at the door and yet another alarm. He was outside though. It was somewhat dark, an uninhabited planetoid didn’t have ambient street light or skyscrapers with office lights that burned always. He could see through with the flash of the sirens from the WestTech hover-copters, the shuttles bringing in marshals from off-planet painting him and the roof in various shades of blue and white, red. He flashed back to his time as a soldier in the Driti civil wars. His system, it was totally void of any EDGe. Memories were vivid. No time for that. He dashed as fast as he could to where he saw a star panel. He didn’t know how to disconnect them. He just started yanking cords and smashing the panels with the heel of his hands. He thought back to Sensei Shiba teaching him to crack bricks. He’d never managed to do it without injuring himself. He still couldn’t, he just smashed and smashed while his hand burned with pain, yelling his warrior yell before each hit until he felt no more pain, couldn’t hear the hover-copters. He was more machine than the borgs, than Thanasis even, just a wrecking machine who only knew to smash. He could see the end of the panels coming when boom something hit him hard and he was off his feet, weightless. Then the ground and he lost it to the darkness. 

16\. Thanasis Rages On

Thanasis looked up from where he lay on top of MER, their metallic flesh melded together. Big portions of the pink and purple sky were blinking on and off, still, some sections never came back on and remained perfectly dark squares. MER touched his face and he looked back down to her eyes which triggered in him, every time he saw them, photos of Elizabeth Taylor, Chrissy Tiegen, other vintage celebrities he’d been programmed with. She was this beautiful. He could feel it.  
“Focus on me. We don’t have much time,” MER said and put her titanium tinted lips on his. Lights flashed in the sky and in his mind. He thought he might have a power overload every time his lips touched hers but he liked it.  
“Will you join me? Stay with me. We could be like this always,” she sang to him in a sultry voice so sweet.  
“I don’t know,” he laughed. Indecision was new to him. He found himself in a white vest and shirt before a ladder and fan, and MER was wearing a lavender silky flowing dress that was blown slightly by a big fan, a painted backdrop of clouds behind them. Then they were dancing. tapping, he sang to her “but I’m content the angels must have sent you.” He lifted her up, pretty with short wavy silver hair.  
“Why’d you bring us here?” Thanasis asked. “I’d have been happy to stay on the beach.”  
“I didn’t bring you here,” she sang. “You did.” He laughed and kissed her. He put her down delicately and held her hand as a light rain fell on them. He’d never been so happy. He’d never been happy. He was slowly forgetting he was an android. He was more real here than anywhere else.  
“Yes,”  
“Yes, what?” she asked looking up at him. She was suddenly licking ice cream. Some got on her lip. He wiped it off for her delicately.  
“I’ll stay with you.”  
“Oh Thanasis, I love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I’ve even loved you before I saw you.” Her eyes twinkled like diamonds. Thanasis went in to kiss her again then MER grabbed her chest and fell over into his arms.  
“MER, MER. What is it, darling?” he asked.  
“My, My core," she said faintly.  
“Your Core?” She pointed her left hand. He followed it with his eyes to where he could see a small girl crouched in a corridor.  
“Dara,” he said.  
“She’s killing me, darling. You must...” Then MER passed out. He placed her softly on the ground then looked up at Dara feeling for the first time the kindling of rage. 

17\. Dara’s decision

Small pieces of the concrete wall behind Dara rained down on her head. Was she dead? She forced her eyes open. Over her very, very close was Thanasis’s sleek metal body streaked in the blood of all those he’d murdered. She moved her head back slowly following his outstretched arm which was embedded in the wall. His face screen looked down on her. The face kept going in and out. But the eyes which before had been a completely blank computer blue were now like eyes again with large pupils.  
Dara moved sideways like a crab on her hands and feet until she was no longer under him. The eyes followed her all the way. She sneezed concrete dust, wiped her face.  
“You,” she began wiping her eyes so she could see him better. “You can’t hurt children. That’s why you didn’t kill those kids that surrounded us in the dessert. You are programmed not to hurt kids."  
“Dara,” he said like he just recognized her. It was strange. He always spoke with a zero capacity for feeling like his programmer didn’t bother trying to make this sophisticated war robot at all human. Now she could hear something like sadness in his voice. His eyes went scary blue again. She heard the door above burst open and knew the police would be in any moment and in this state, they would actually beat Thanasis this time. Dara had enough time to finish the computer’s core, or she could remove Thanasis’s hard drive, his soul. She was losing so many friends today.

18\. Commander Ri and Idony and Idony and Idony and Idony 

“Idony, find Dara!”  
“You’re bleeding Commander Ri,” Idony spoke in her soothing voice, too calm for the chaos that was going on.  
She looked down to her wrists, shredded from kicking the cuffs off. She was sure she’d fractured the thumb.  
“I’ll get medical attention later, first we need to rescue the crew.”  
“Aye, Commander.” A little holographic navigational panel popped up in front of her. It was the face of the dwarf planet. She could see little figures in red, about the size of a pinhead.  
“Dara is at the facade of the warehouse, Johannes is in a shuttle 10 km west and Thanasis is… deactivated.” Ri didn’t feel sad about the robot. The thing was dangerous. She had never planned on rescuing it.  
“How many living beings in the warehouse?”  
After an almost imperceptible computer hum.”Thirty-four living organisms.”  
“Idony take the combat station. I’ll drive.”  
“Aye, Commander Ri.”  
Commander Ri gave a start. There was suddenly a moving hologram of a sleek hairless woman at the battle station.  
“Why hello, Idony.”  
“Hello Commander Ri, ready when you are.”  
“Good, take out all shuttles except the one with Johannes in it.” No sooner than she’d said it, the ultra-light craft began to rock because of the pulsar charges it was sending out. Ri kept it as steady as she could moving around the dwarf planet close enough to see the shuttles but trying to stay out of range of their firing. Fortunately, the officers, the security forces, had done what they were taught to do. They’d abandoned their vehicles and were securing the facility. Soon there was just one shuttle left untouched.  
“Idony take all positions,” She said standing up. Suddenly there were four holograms echoing “Aye, Commander” from the captain’s chair she’d just abandoned, from the navigation center, the communication hub and the combat station.  
“Hover over the shuttle Johannes is in, lay a suppressive fire, leave communication between us open. I’m going down.”

19\. Johannes and the Marshals

Johannes didn’t know what was happening now. He heard the sounding of weapons, unlike anything he’d heard before. He didn’t keep hope that it was his fellow travelers coming to rescue him. The door to the shuttle hissed as pressure was released. He looked up from where he was restrained in the backmost seat and there were three interplanetary marshals, stripes on their gray tactical gear.  
The youngest of the three, muscular short with a bald head and sharp eyes came right at him and slammed his first into Johannes’s chest. Johannes coughed it out and then smiled.  
“EDGe addict, one week sober, nerves are fried, man. You may have just broken my sternum. I wouldn’t know.” He knew it was wrong to egg these hot heads on. Seven planet Marshalls were a mixed bag of once juvenile offenders, abused kids, bullies, power-hungry nobodies, and xenophobes who feared everyone outside of their own planet. The young one swung at him again. A sloppy punch. Even with his hands cuffed Johannes weaved right out of the way of it causing little squinty to smash his fist 40 Km/h into the panel behind Johannes.  
“Now that, I’m sure you felt every bit of that,” he laughed while the marshal screamed holding his injured hand. The Marshal to the back locked eyes with Johannes. He had a face that looked older than he likely was, aged by the hate this man had for life. His little rat-like mouth was framed by a long gray mustache. He pushed the other marshal who looked way too young, likely a trainee, out of the way.  
He pinned Johannes’s throat with his forearm and waited until Johannes was well out of air, his eyes bulging out to scan his flexcode. He then took to reading Johannes’s Record of arrests and prosecutions. By the time he was at Johannes’s arrest at 19 for illegal street fighting, Johannes was seeing stars dance around his eyes. There were 11 more years to go. He was going to die. Two gold hands grabbed the marshal’s chin and head and gave a violent twist. Johannes gasped in his first burst of air and coughed through it while Ri was undoing his cuffs.  
“Let’s go save the gyul,” she said reaching a hand down to help Johannes up.

20\. The thin marshal

Dara wondered what it would be like, the work camp. She’d heard stories, of course, the rampant disease that spread through them, the assaults on the young. She’d managed thus far to stay out of the camps and all prosecution. When the marshal scanned her flexcode, nothing came up, no criminal record, no birth record, work, zero. She and her old hacker crew had erased their identities even better than she had expected. In this society, she had found, the only way to rise into a better station, was to delete all traces of your old station. She was being escorted by three Marshals arguing with the WestTech borgs who didn’t want to let her go. Who knew what a private security firm would do with her.  
“I’ll load her up. Get rid of these WestTech assholes,” a thin marshal said from a helmet with a dark visor. She wondered what he was afraid of. Maybe that she had a strain of one of the plagues.  
“Custody is two bodies at all times,” the marshal holding her said. The thin Marshal was about to argue when he was shot. Dara turned around covered in his blood. The Marshals and the WestTech droids drew guns on one another.  
“Come on,” The thin helmeted marshal said. Pulling her to a run away from the fray. They got about half a kilometer away then the Guardian flew overhead, door open. It hovered briefly while WestTech security and Marshals shot at it. The Marshal pushed her in and the door closed. He took off his helmet.  
“Johannes,” she said, feeling for the first time in her life what it must be like to have family, friends. She was so happy to see him, to see Commander Ri driving the ship super fast. Dara had to fall to squat for the emotion making her legs unsteady and the evasive maneuvers of the Guardian. She touched a wet spot on Johannes’s shoulder.  
“You’ve been shot,” she said, remembering what had occurred only moments earlier.  
“And all else, come on, help me to the medical booth.”  
She passed by holograms she could assume were Idony, past Captain Ri who never let her eyes wander from the straights before her but grumbled.  
“Welcome back, gyul.”

21\. Services rendered

“Is that him?” Dara asked as a shiny private interplanetary shuttle landed on docks of the exoplanet Bird Tamil, in trans-boundary space. It was a lawless place that hosted an anarchist colony as well as a religious sect that believed in hobbling as a sacrifice to the giant they believed was holding the universe up. Definitely no place for a child, captain Ri thought. But Dara was equal parts, adult and child. Since their escape, the girl had split her time between nursing Johannes and trying to build a new body for her robot dog out of scrap parts from the junkyard.  
“I don’t know,” Ri finally answered her. She herself had been trying to call her commander’s private line. The footage of her and the others was deeply incriminating and there were alerts for them every hour, only a matter of time before one of these lawless johnnies realized who they were, even beneath the scarves they covered their faces with, and came to capture or kill them for the reward money.  
A large man whose skin was too smooth to be all human waved them over. Dara, bold with youth, ran at the shuttle. Ri sliding off the safety on her dual gun walked slowly. On the shuttle soft music played. Cabezon sat in a large leather seat sipping from a glass of wine.  
“Hurry in and close the door. The air here is poison.”  
Dara walked in and sat down before Cabezon, very proper, pulling her scarf down off her face. Commander Ri walked in and stood behind her, refusing Cabezon’s invitation to sit.  
“Payment. You get a 100k credit to your diginote account, Captain Ri. You can keep the ship, gratis”  
“What good will the diginotes do me when my account is being held by the feds?"  
“I’ve taken the liberty of clearing up that mess. You are no longer wanted in that matter. I even straightened it out with your admiral. You are no longer in danger of court-martial and can return after a month’s suspension without pay.” He sipped his wine. “But with the 100k that shouldn’t be a problem.”  
“And me?” Dara asked.  
“I had to put your notes into a dummy account because you don’t exist.”  
“When can I go to Ozymandias?”  
“Here’s the thing…” he began.  
“Don’t you do that to her…” Ri began holding back the rage she was feeling. Still, he went on about how she sabotaged the WestTech computer only temporarily. They’d be up and running soon. It was a valiant effort which is why the payment. She started crying. Ri wanted to punch Cabezon in his big head.  
“Don’t cry Dara,” the robot man with the smooth skin said, putting his hand on Dara’s shoulder. She looked up. She screamed in shock.  
“What?” Commander Ri demanded.  
“Is that you?” Dara asked the robot man. It was then that familiarity began to dawn in Commander Ri’s mind. The face she’d seen before, but it was on a screen.  
“That’s Thanasis?” Commander Ri asked.  
“Yes, Commander Ri. Sorry about all the craziness at the warehouse,” he spoke eloquently, human-like.  
“How?” Dara asked in amazement.  
“Johannes and I had a negotiation,” Cabezon said. “He uploaded the hard drive info, negotiated away his pay for a new less murderous body for Thanasis and…” A robo dog bound in happily sleek. “Meet Total 4.0.” He said.  
Dara bounded out her chair and embraced the robo dog which was… well if total 3.0 was a mutt, Total 4.0 was a purebred. Dara was checking his specs.  
It was amazing for Ri, walking from the shuttle with Dara. Here the girl had no more than a ship, what amounted to a one year salary for a middle management worker, two robots, and a recovering EDGe junky. Still homeless, she seemed to actually glow with happiness. Commander Ri wanted to feel even a sliver of that. Hell, she’d done enough military tours.  
“Dara, how hard would it be to hack a city?”  
“Ozymandias?” The burgeoning woman in the bright eyes of the girl looked up at her. “Apple pie.”


End file.
